This and That

Once again, blogging in bullet form.  I'm pathetic.  Love me or leave baby.  Well, please don't leave - just try to get over my lack of ability to form a full coherent blog theme.

• The token behavior plan is working. . .if one wants to say that the children never getting screens again the rest of their natural-born lives is considered working!  The boys earned some tokens early on and received screen time. But the last couple of days have been bone dry in the screen department.  No tokens being earned, and whole days being taken away for the first offense seen.  It may be weeks, months, before these children ever play with their beloved electronics again.  And I'm not complaining.  And actually neither are they!  They seem to realize that getting to use them is in their hands, but they aren't trying very hard to behave.  I'm hoping that eventually they will realize what needs to be done to restore order to our house get their precious screens back.
• I was thinking about the Elf on the Shelf the other day, and how he is going to make a comeback in just a few short weeks.  And the mere thought of him drained me.
• Out of the mouths of babes:
• "Spy would be a perfect job for me because I have white hair. " (pause) "And that is the exact opposite of the color that they have to wear!"
• I'm working on updating all of the kids'  pictures for our portrait wall in the family room.  I have two kids done so far.  How is this so hard?  I am just taking them to JCP or Target due to the Freedom Budget (I am free to make choices!  Free to choose (usually) sub-par photography options!), but finding the time is proving quite challenging!  The thought of taking all the  kids to a studio for one of the kids' pictures sounds a bit exhausting.  I'm relatively certain tokens would not be earned, if you get what I'm saying.  At least I have two done (though one of those is actually cheating - it is one of his confirmation pictures from last spring - I call that being resourceful).  Three to go.  By the time I get those three done, the first ones will be outdated.  Sigh.
• I am very much enjoying the phrase "for realsies".  I am using it in place of the prosaic phrase "That's true" or the slightly more hip "for real".  I have taken it up a notch.  "For realsies" makes me sound like a cool mom - my kids love it when I say it, especially around their friends.  My husband often tells me how he wishes I would say it much more often.  Basically, everyone thinks my vocabulary is off the charts.  I even got my small group saying it!  For realsies!!